Minimally invasive operations require a high degree of accuracy in order to guarantee short hospital stays and quick recovery times. Often in such operations, however, the operations are performed deep within the patient's body and, therefore, the surgeon does not have direct visual access to the surgical workspace. To assist the surgeon in this regard, reference arrays or the like, in conjunction with navigation systems, for example, may be used to provide information and guidance to the surgeon with respect to the surgical workspace. Such reference arrays may be fixed to an area of interest such that they may be visible to particular sighting methods, such as X-rays, ultrasonic methods, optical methods (including light in the infrared spectrum), or the like, so that information regarding the distances, shapes and operations in the surgical workspace may be obtained.
As will be appreciated, once the reference elements or reference arrays are calibrated, they cannot be shifted or displaced with respect to their original location. A displacement of the reference array or of one or more reference elements may divert the surgeon from the actual situation in the surgical workspace and, thus, might cause surgical errors.
In the prior art, there are many different devices that may be used when operating on an injured bone. In this respect, reference is made, for example, to U.S. Pat. No. 6,607,561, U.S. Pat. No. 6,503,251, U.S. Pat. No. 6,482,208, U.S. Pat. No. 6,443,955, U.S. Pat. No. 5,688,285, U.S. Pat. No. 4,927,421 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,350, said prior art references all being directed to the use of surgical fixing devices for fixing ligaments, bone parts, bones and so on.